Hippocratic Fool's Day

I've come to the conclusion that my doctor is playing a very elaborate practical joke on me, one that not only involves both him and his receptionist, but also his colleagues, their staff, the mass media, and one suspects, George Bush (if only because I always suspect George Bush). With each trip to my doctor's office, I get an earful about some new diet I should follow, or yet another vice that he expects me to give up, if only to cover a bet to see how high he can raise my blood pressure when he tells me.

I swear I hear someone snickering every time I hand over my health card.

This week I got the double whammy of being told to cut back on salt and to eat more fish, with the assurance that I'm not in imminent danger of having blood squirt out of my ears due to excessive pressure, or clog up unexpectedly because of a lack of omega-3 fatty acids. Yet given my family history, well, let's just say, sir, that if you want to see your children graduate from university, then you might want to find yourself a nice fresh trout toute de suite.

Informed that I don't have children to see through toilet training, much less twenty years of education and personal debt, he merely laughed in that way of his that says he knows something I don't, but perhaps he'll just leave it until my next visit.

Ah, but this is where I know he's got some side bets with the local newspapers, because, there in big, bold, twenty-point type that night was the headline "Heavy metals found in Atlantic Salmon, experts warn." Apparently farmed-raised salmon has enough mercury in it to turn us all into human thermometers if we eat the three servings-per-week recommended by you-know-who (unless we take to raising them ourselves in the backyard using giant vats of purified mineral water and organic fish feed).

In the meantime, I'm also under orders to shrink my body mass to levels not seen since I got my first pimple or risk not seeing those imaginary children of mine learn to swim in my imaginary pool.

Well, after reading about poisoned fish, I turned to read about the death of one Bob Atkins, he of the famous, heavily marketed and highly recommended by you-know-who diet for losing weight quickly and safely, so we can all live into our hundreds and watch our great-great-grandchildren hit menopause. Well, it seems that Dr. Atkins dropped dead of a heart attack at seventy-two, with a body mass index that might be considered healthy for a middle-aged hippopotamus, or perhaps at least useful to a NFL linebacker.

Ah, but if you haven't heard it yet, the Heart and Stroke Foundation has declared obesity the number one scourge of this generation, much as smoking was for the one before, which means that after all the nicotine patches, chewed nails and years of being a serious bastard to everyone around you while you engaged in a bitter divorce from that Camel you were married to for so long, you now have to eat food normally reserved for what eventually becomes, well, the food you normally eat.

Yes, your reward for all that agony, and those three assault convictions you got before finding Nicorette, is plate after plate of green leafy stuff that apparently will have your colon snapping around like a frisky anaconda, and your arteries working better than the Suez canal.

Because the goal here, aside from seeing your kids do all those amazing memorable things kids apparently do (and which for all you ex-smokers out there, probably involves clearing a few restraining orders to see) is to live long lives well into your nineties. This will allow you to not only see, but experience all the amazing, memorable things that the elderly do, such as losing one or both of your bowel and bladder functions; going deaf, blind, or both; catching pneumonia as regularly as you used to catch a cold; developing arthritis and osteoporosis; and undergoing multiple joint replacement surgeries for all those bone-shattering falls you're likely to have.

And if you're really lucky, you'll contract Alzheimer's disease or some other form of dementia, lose your mind, and then those kids you worked so hard to be around for can change your diaper, give you your pills, and make sure you don't inadvertently put too much salt on your salad.

And that folks, is the biggest joke of all.